Page 10 of Jax

It beeped again.

10 minutes.

Wait. He wants me to go?

When Jackson—I meant—Jaxhad taken Max out of my hands, I thought that was it. I wasn’t exactly surprised that he’d want as little involvement with me as possible. After seeing Max like she was, I knew it would take time to help her, and although I was expecting him to keep me notified, I didn’t think he’d be demanding my presence so quickly. I reread the message to make sure I wasn’t reading it wrong, but after the sixth time, I knew Jackson couldn’t be clearer.

I stood from the bed and before I even got my boots on, another beep rang from the phone.

9 minutes.

Maybe Jackson hadn’t changed as much as I thought.

* * *

“You took in another one?” I mumbled, pushing back the strands of hair the wind was tugging out. My boots pushed against the dirt at the base of the fence, working a small groove the size of my shoe as I waited for Jackson to reply to me. Sometimes he never did—a kid’s opinion isn’t important after all—and I didn’t think he would.

“Stop scuffing your boots, Ronnie,” Jackson tutted, fiddling with the strand of mature golden grass between his teeth. He flicked it about like a cat’s tail and I glared at it with envy.

With one more kick in the dirt—just to annoy him—I climbed through the fence, taking his bored reply as invitation into the field. I took a seat next to him in the long grass, plucking my own piece of grass and placing it between my teeth—until it was suddenly gone.

“Hey!” I glared, watching Jackson toss it into the endless sea of its counterparts.

“Don’t put weird things in your mouth,” Jackson didn’t bother to look at me. His big brown eyes looked at the figure of the spotted stallion gnawing on a nearby tree branch.

“Hypocritter.”

He smirked. “It’s hypocrite.” It was small and fleeting, but I glared at his face anyway. His stupid, pretty face.

“So,” I grumbled, leaning closer to him. Not enough to touch him since I didn’t want him to move away. “What’s this one’s problem?”

“It’s not as simple as a problem, Ronnie.” Jax sighed, the piece of grass lowering toward the earth. “It’s a trial. A series of problems it’s got to overcome.”

“Like in the Bible?” I mused, thinking about the sermons momma had me attend every Sunday.

“Yeah, like the Bible.” Softness overshadowed his voice, and I knew he had stopped listening to me. Daddy always told me he had an attention span as short as a toothpick for people, but as wide as an ocean for horses.

If only he had that kind of attention for me….

A child’s dream—that’s what Pa would call that. But even when I grew up, I knew I’d still have that same dream. Jackson was the love of my life, after all.

I watched him a little longer that afternoon as he observed the stallion, leaving only when I was called for supper. Without looking back, I knew Jackson would be staying to watch that horse long past his supper and long past the sun setting.

That was just who my Jackson was.

* * *

The memory felt longer than the short few minutes it took me to arrive at the organic farm. I felt as if I were waking from a long dream, and I remembered little from the journey.

So much for no more reminiscing….

I had long since left town and was now bumbling down a dirt path past the hand-painted wooden sign readingFellpeak Organic Farm.

I drove toward an old-styled farm house that looked like it had been preserved for the last fifty years with the wooden swing on the porch, hatched window shutters, white pansies in the flower boxes, and endless golden fields stretching into the horizon behind it.

The sight of it filled me with a warm, homely feeling, seeing a house that appeared to have a long history of care and love.

It was the nasty screech of my truck’s breaks as I came to a halt that broke those warm feelings. I set my stiff handbrake after a few attempts and hopped out of my rust bucket. Wishing my years of love and care had let my old baby survive as well as the house had, it hadn’t.

---